


when you least expect it

by autumnchills



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Nightmares, Slice of Life, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28470129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnchills/pseuds/autumnchills
Summary: Logically, he knows that nothing is actually going to happen. He’s never been prophetically inclined, and despite his many superstitions, he doesn’t read into dreams like he did when he was younger. It doesn’t stop the buried memory of his dream from clawing at his chest and resting at the back of his eyes, waiting to be seen.—Buck's nightmare comes to haunt him during the day.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 114





	when you least expect it

**Author's Note:**

> Just a heads up that there was almost no point to this story because it was originally intended as a vent fic but I stopped writing it oops!

Nightmares come in many forms. Some were scary, and others sometimes left him drained, both physically and emotionally. 

Today, like many days, he wakes up and can’t remember what he even dreamed about. It’s these ones that are the worst kind of nightmares because they haunt him through the day like a looming threat. He’s okay, but he’s not. He feels on edge, like he’s waiting for something to happen.

Logically, he knows that nothing is actually going to happen. He’s never been prophetically inclined, and despite his many superstitions, he doesn’t read into dreams like he did when he was younger. It doesn’t stop the buried memory of his dream from clawing at his chest and resting at the back of his eyes, waiting to be seen.

That’s how it always happens when he can’t immediately recall a nightmare. It hits him when he least expects it. It’s not always bad. Most of the time it startles him and he takes a second to recall the memory. But there are times that it’s not ideal either, like when he’s driving home and gets so lost in thought that he misses the exit for his apartment twice over and spends an extra thirty minutes to get home because he’d rather take the surface streets than get stuck in LA traffic at that time.

Nonetheless, it sucks, but it’s no reason to call out of work, so he splashes some water on his face and goes in like any other day. He feels just a dash of out of it, but the coffee that gets placed in his hands rids him of the last of the fogginess clouding his head.

“You good?” Eddie asks him.

Buck looks to him like he hung the moon. “Always at one hundred percent in your caring hands,” he answers easily. And like the oblivious fool he is, Eddie takes it for playful flirting. Hen, the person who actually made the coffee this morning, rolls her eyes, and Chim chews at his gum with a renewed enthusiasm and a bright smile on his face.

 _Blind_ , Buck sees Chim mouth at Hen.

The woman just nods and sips at her own drink.

Yeah, maybe Eddie is blind, Buck thinks, but it’s fine because he’ll be here when Eddie is ready to start noticing that his flirting has been anything _but_ playful since Christmas. Really, it’s fine that Eddie doesn’t notice it. He has more than enough on his plate, especially with the one-year anniversary of Shannon’s death having just passed. For now, Buck is content with laying it all out there for Eddie to pick up when the time comes. He has no shame when it comes to the entire station knowing about his feelings. He could never be ashamed of loving a man like Edmundo Diaz.

Eddie makes it easy to forget about the feelings the nightmare left behind. His chest feels lighter and his shoulders feel like they’re not wound so tight. He breaks down the tension piece by piece with laughter, playful banter, and private smiles, all without trying. Eddie has no idea what he does to Buck and how he makes him feel. 

On any other day, this might be a good thing, but today, it means that when Buck remembers, it takes him more than a little off guard. 

They’re on the side of a cliff when it hits him, attempting to extract a kid from the backseat of a car. Removing everyone else had been a piece of cake, but the young boy’s side of the car had taken the biggest hit and crunched inwards before they’d slid over the edge in a nosedive. Luckily, the winding road was carved pretty tight into the hills, so the car had been wedged. The likelihood of it falling was low, but the kid was definitely at risk of bleeding out from an unseen leg wound that the boy could only feel.

“Is there a lot of blood, or a little bit?” Eddie had asked when they first got to work. The car was warped in an odd bend that left Eddie unable to see his leg wound from the opposite side of the vehicle where he’d helped the boy’s sister out.

“A lot,” he had cried. “It feels like a lot.”

So they’d worked as fast as they could.

“Alright, try and get him now, Buck,” Eddie calls out from where he’s got a crowbar prying the seat off of the boy’s legs. 

“Okay, you ready, Hector?” Buck asks.

The boy, Hector, nods. 

Buck leans into the window and wraps his arms around the boy’s small frame. 

“Grab on tight,” he instructs the boy. “Wrap your arms around my neck and let me know if for any reason you can’t hold on.”

The boy just nods, arms encircling Buck’s neck. 

“You good?” he asks. Hector nods into his neck. “Okay, I’m going to lift you slowly.”

“Cap,” Eddie says into his radio, “The seat’s good. Buck’s moving to extract the kid. I’m going to move around to assist.”

Bobby responds with an affirmation as Buck attempts his first pull. It’s gentle and smooth, but the boy’s grip tightens as he screams into Buck’s ear. 

Buck’s pull immediately halts and the kid’s cries die down.

“What is it?” Eddie calls from a few feet above. Both men can hear the kid’s mom yelling from the edge of the road at the sound of her son’s pain.

“Hey, Hector,” Buck says softly. “I know it hurts, but what happened? Is your leg still stuck? Is it the chair?”

The boy shakes his head. “No, no,” he mumbles. “I—” he gasps and bites back more cries. “I think my bone is sticking out,” he whispers fearfully. “I— I felt it move.” The boy’s cheeks bulge like he might puke at the thought, but he holds back and takes a deep, shaky breath instead.

Buck looks up to Eddie as Hector presses his face into his shoulder. Eddie’s eyes are wide and he relays the information to their captain. Buck knows he can’t lift the boy out and through the window if his bone is shifting like it seems to be. 

“We’re going to open the door,” Eddie states. His face has switched from worry to a hard determination. They both know that it’s not ideal. Opening the door will shift the weight of the car. Though the car is wedged pretty good and hasn’t so much as creaked since they’ve been extracting the family, it creates a risk that wasn’t there before.

“Let’s do it,” he responds. “Hector, I need you to let go of my neck and latch onto my arms instead.” The boy follows the order without question. Buck can’t help but think of how brave he’s being, putting his faith in him and his team to get him out. 

“Okay, I got him, Eds. Go ahead and open the door.”

Eddie does, but it’s slow going to make sure that it doesn’t shift the car. Thankfully, it doesn’t, and within seconds that feel like minutes, the door remains open, offering just over a foot-wide gap. The only thing keeping it from falling open is where it presses against Buck’s body, who’s still reaching through. 

“Okay,” Eddie mutters under his breath. “So far, so good. Hector, I need you to switch your grip to me now.”

The boy does as told, and once Buck’s hands are free, he grabs a hold of his line and moves out from under the door, letting it slowly fall open as far as it can go. 

“How should we do this?” Buck finds himself asking Bobby through the radio. “If we got exposed bone, should we get Hen or Chim down here?”

“Continue as planned,” Bobby tells him. “If he’s not already feeling faint, he will if we wait to get one of them down there. It’ll be faster to get him up here.”

“Copy that, Cap.”

Buck and Eddie move swiftly then. Eddie keeps a grip on Hector, and now Buck helps guide the basket down as Hen lowers it from above.

“Buck,” Eddie calls after a moment, “I’m going to need your help. I don’t think we can get an angle. It’s going to hurt like hell, but we need to press his bone in so it won’t snag.”

“For real?” Hector shouts, almost hysterically. 

Buck misses Eddie’s response in favor of working his way into the small door space beside his partner. It’s not an easy thing to manage considering the risk of his and Eddie’s lines getting tangled.

Once he’s in position, Buck shines a light on the leg and finds that the kid’s bone _is_ snagging on the chair. Though the chair is pressing on the kid’s legs pretty tight, he would have been able to wiggle out of there no problem otherwise.

“Hey,” Hector calls. “Um, sir?” 

Buck looks up at the kid. “What’s up, kid?” He glances at Eddie. The man makes a motion with his head as Hector starts speaking.

“Can you, like, not tell me when you’re—”

Buck presses down and Eddie pulls at once, causing the boy to scream out.

And _that’s_ when it happens.

There’s screaming echoing in his ears that doesn’t belong to Hector, and an onslaught of memories burst through the carefully built walls in his head.

There’s a flash of snow in his head, along with bright white lights. It sends chills down his arms despite the LA heat.

He keeps moving despite his dream revelation, but he fails to hear anything going on.

Eddie looks at him with an intensity that dares to dig right into his chest, but the older man says nothing as they begin their ascent.

Buck’s fortunate that there’s even more bustle going on back up on the main road because it means fewer people are paying attention to him when he tears his harness off of him and beelines for the truck, hiding behind it to puke up the coffee and what little breakfast he ate this morning. 

“Woah,” Chim says, coming up on Buck’s side. “What happened?” 

Buck can only manage to shake his head as he presses a trembling hand to the truck in an attempt to balance himself.

“Hey,” Eddie calls then, finally free of his own harness and jogging up to them. “Buck, what the hell happ—”

His best friend cuts himself off as he glances down at the puke on the ground.

“Is he sick?” Eddie asks Chim.

Chim shrugs. “You know as much as I do, man.”

More images flash through Buck’s head as he tries to compose himself. He doesn’t even think to remove his gloves before it’s too late, and a whiff of blood coming off of them fills his senses.

Both Eddie and Chim jump back as Buck jerks like he might puke again, but nothing leaves his mouth.

“Get them off,” he mutters, holding out his hands and starting to remove them. He was talking more to himself, but Eddie helps him rip them off all the same.

“I got to go,” Chim says then, glancing over Eddie’s shoulder and toward the ambulances. One other paramedic and a few of their other firefighters are helping out where he’s supposed to be. “Eddie, keep an eye on him, yeah?”

Buck watches as Chim jets away before Eddie can respond, but Buck knows his friend would be watching over him regardless of anyone asking him to.

“So, are you going to explain what that was about?” Eddie asks once the gloves are removed and shoved into his turnout coat. The man doesn’t care so much about getting blood on his clothes if it means keeping them out of smelling range so that Buck won’t puke again.

But Bobby’s voice breaks through the air, stopping Buck before he can even start. Eddie shouts back to him.

“Later,” Buck says to Eddie, already dreading the moment.

Eddie grips him by the shoulder, forcing Buck to meet his eyes.

“Later,” Eddie insists. “I’ll hold you to that.”

—

Later comes in the form of a beer and burgers, courtesy of Eddie after insisting that Buck come over after their shift.

Later is when Buck sighs, explaining that no matter how bad he looked earlier, he’s fine now. The issue is just as it’s always been: a nightmare coming to take its toll much later than it should have.

“I mean, I did wake up pretty shaken,” Buck admits, taking another small, un-Buck-like sip from his beer. “And nightmares don’t usually affect me like this. It’s just that sometimes, well… sometimes I can’t remember them when I wake up, and something will trigger it later in the day.”

“You mean to tell me a nightmare did that? That’s— that reaction isn’t normal, Buck.”

“ _Normally_ , my nightmares aren’t so,” Buck cringes, “graphic.”

Eddie goes to say something but Buck cuts him off.

“Listen, Eddie. I’m seriously fine, okay? It was only so bad because my nightmare was a mixture of memories and fears. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember it, and then the kid’s situation helped to remind me. I’m already over it. I might not even remember it a week from now.”

Eddie sighs and picks a sesame seed off of his bun. “Only if you’re sure. You were super pale. And not just because you’re white and in need of some sun.”

Buck bursts into nervous laughter and punches Eddie on the shoulder. And just like that, he can finally start to put the nightmare and bad day behind him. 

Because the truth is that the nightmare means nothing. Sometimes, nightmares are nothing more than a way to deal with everyday stress or anxiousness, and it’s a sign that he’s working through it just fine. The dream was nothing but a blip in his week.

And Eddie helps. He makes it easy to forget about the feelings that the nightmare left behind. His chest feels lighter and his shoulders feel like they’re not wound so tight. Just like this morning, he breaks down the tension piece by piece with laughter, playful banter, and private smiles, all without trying. Eddie has no idea what he does to Buck and how he makes him feel. 

One day, when the man is ready, Buck will tell him just how much Eddie means to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year fam! Hope you enjoy reading this, seeing as I started it on December 29, 2019, lost inspiration for it the same day, and am now finishing it a year later LOL! Two days of writing spread out over one year because I suck. Hope the writing style was consistent :)
> 
> Please leave comments and kudos, as they always encourage me to write more! If you feel I missed some necessary story tags please let me know what it is I should add. If a tag feels inaccurate, please feel free to let me know about that as well. Please also refrain from commenting on the likelihood of a rescue playing out like this because I honestly have no idea but also don't mind that it's not accurate as it is a work of fiction!  
>    
> Special Thanks to my beta reader: [soft_satan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_satan/pseuds/soft_satan)


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